Again...

We lost another sweet soul to cancer. When I first found out she had cancer, I was with the others...waiting for her to return. But I got tired of waiting...

So I started writing her.  I think I'm at my best when I'm writing.  I started regaling her with the naughty bits of my life...with the understanding that everything I wrote her and she read would be Vegas.  I was very descriptive...something I don't normally do with most people at work.  She was such a sweet soul, but for some reason, I felt like she needed a bit of the naughty to stop the doubts from rolling around in her head.

She rallied and came back to work.  But, it was short lived.  Once she found out the cancer was back, she retired.  I still wrote her.  I still told her all the stuff that I'd never want people at work to find out about me.  I still wanted to believe that a bit of the naughty would help her fight. She knows the in's and out's of the Cabo Cowboy...she knows about D from Washougal (and that I called him a vagina), she knows about the boytoy and my angst of never finding a love that will last forever.  Alas, it was not to be.  She knew she was leaving and accepted that...she went with grace. She made her peace with God.

I, however, have a difficult time with it.  I know this isn't going to be the last person I lose...no matter how much I wish it was. But I can't help but think there are more difficult roads ahead for me. I need all the guardian angels I can get, but I don't want them leaving me in life. I need them here. Cancer is unfair, it's insidious, it's demoralizing. Yeah, I know life isn't fair...I've always known it and lived with it.  But it always takes really good people!

I'm just venting here peeps. But it's things like these that make you treasure the little things.  This weekend...the day she died, I was holding my niece close, my nose buried in her hair and thinking right at that moment that I didn't want it to end.  That this moment is the epitome of my life...there couldn't possibly be a sweeter moment and I started to cry.  My niece looked at me and asked me..."Auntie, why are you crying?" I told her that they were happy tears and that she is such a treasure in my life.  Although she didn't get the words...she got the feeling and she clutched on to me and held me close...and we stayed like that...for quite awhile.

It's the little things, the scent of someone's hair, the trace of a touch on your skin, a sweet memory of life, of love...of what was, what could've been, what will be.

Ana was loved, she was respected, treasured. She will be missed and in the grand scheme of things, I think that if I can achieve the same, I won't be doing half bad.